Financial Tips for Parents

When you have children, you get lots of advice and tips from everyone but one area that tends to be overlooked is the financial aspect.

In the excitement of impending parenthood, or the crazy first few months – and years – you may never get around to taking some important financial steps. It’s too easy to forget this essential topic so this article is designed to be a useful guide to some of the issues you need to consider.

Multiple surveys have put the cost of raising a child at eye-watering levels over their first 18 years and expats working in the UAE have the added cost of education and medical bills to contend with.

Factor in university or college costs and the fact that many young adults may not be fully financially independent until closer to age 25, and you can see just how important it is to plan sensibly.

Let’s look at some of the financial steps you need to consider.

Continue reading

10 Financial Resolutions for 2022 you can actually keep

Many of us make New Year resolutions, but how many of those are about our finances? And how many of them do we really keep?

financial resolutions2020 and 2021 have been tough years for large numbers of people and we can’t be sure of what else is in store, but knowing you have taken all the right financial steps will put you in a good position to weather any future storm.

Invariably, we could all do a little better and some focus rarely goes amiss. With that in mind here’s a list of 10 steps you can take to get yourself financially fitter in 2022.

Continue reading

Family matters: some things never change

Winston Churchill is a towering figure in British political history but was also an orator and writer. What I want to focus on is a quote that is relevant to most of our lives, even now, over 100 years after he said them:

Continue reading

Need to know: UAE Labour Law in the time of Coronavirus

As many will be aware, I have been writing about UAE employment regulations, and other matters, in my weekly column in The National newspaper since 2008. This is addition to my main business as an Independent Financial Adviser. All columns are online but in view of the current economic situation in relation to COVID-19, I thought it would be useful to clarify both employee and employer rights at this time.

Continue reading

2019: how it is going for you? UAE survey results

A few weeks ago I asked people to complete a survey to see how 2019 is going for them, from a largely financial and work perspective.  Everyone was asked a series of questions about stability of work, the property market, what was impacting their personal finances, personal debts and how they felt about their life going into the second half of 2019.

Over 400 replied with just over 51% being in the 31 to 45 age group. The next largest group of respondents was aged 46 to 60 years (35%) and 70% of total respondents were married.

Continue reading

Need to know: UAE Consumer Protection Regulations

 The UAE has had legislation in place to protect consumers for quite a few years but the details are not as well known as they might be so this article is an overview of the law and your rights when purchasing goods and services.

Continue reading